Image © Healy Racing
Early Doors gained his first success under rules since his 2020 Galway Plate victory almost four years earlier, when he pounced late to land the Dan Linehan’s Celebrating 50 Years of Hospitality Hunter Chase.
Early Doors gained his first success under rules since his 2020 Galway Plate victory almost four years earlier, when he pounced late to land the Dan Linehan’s Celebrating 50 Years of Hospitality Hunter Chase.
Third behind the recent Punchestown Champion Hunter Chase runner-up Lifetime Ambition in the Jack Tyner Memorial in Cork on Easter Monday, Enda Bolger’s charge was sent off as a 3/1 shot and Derek O’Connor had him switched off on the inside of the field as it was Romeo Magico and Nice To Meet who cut out much of the running.
The latter, who had finished second in the corresponding race 12 months earlier, began to thread water from the exit out of the back straight as there were still plenty of challengers yet to play their cards.
Heading into the closing stages it had looked as though the Tramore winner Shiroccosmagicgem would prove to be the biggest danger to the favourite Romeo Magico, particularly after he was not fluent at the last.
But O’Connor got a dream run up the inside as he pounced late aboard the 11-year-old to take the spoils by a comfortable two and a half lengths.
There was a further one length back to Shiroccosmagicgem, with Earth Furies, a winner 24 hours earlier in Loughrea, gamely taking fourth.
“We have been in trouble with our gallops all winter and its only in the last couple of weeks that we have been able to get into a routine again with them,” the winning trainer said.
“It’s great to win with him, he is a gorgeous little horse, Joseph had filled me in with all his traits and it’s just the better ground is a big factor, but I must say that the man on his back, he is an ace.
“He ran at Gowran when it was very heavy and then when he ran in Cork it was heavy and he just wasn’t the same horse. There was a lot more spark in him today and Derek was always kind of happy from the third last, he was picking them up and he quickened up well after the last.
“There is another one of these at Listowel in about three weeks’ time and that is where we will head for.”
